Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing

Cloud computing has now become a part of our life. We use it to store our data (images, files, videos) online. As data is stored online, we can access it from any part of the world. Well, if you’re a developer, then you can use PaaS cloud providers to host and run your application. Here are the major advantages of cloud computing technology:

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Pay per use pricing model: In SaaS (software as a service) cloud computing service, you’ll be billed only for the resource you use. The bill will display your CPU cycles, DB space, read-write operations of your application.

Affordable: If you want to launch a large application, then you have two options – use a cloud computing platform or setup your servers. The 2nd option should be avoided by startup company or a small business as it requires spending 1000s of dollars in purchasing servers, fast internet connection, power backup, firewall systems, etc. As you are billed only for the resources you use, cloud technology is more affordable than investing money in software/hardware.

Reliable: If your application uses DB, then you have to worry only about its performance. Cloud service providers have skilled DBA teams (database administrators) that take care of backing up your data and optimizing DB tables.

High Performance: The top cloud platform service providers are Google, Oracle, SAP, Amazon (AWS), etc. Well, these are the most reputable IT organizations with good infrastructure. The Hosting infrastructure of these companies is excellent. They are responsible for backing up your application data, updating web servers and databases, etc. Thus, you should focus on expanding your business rather than worrying about the front and back end.

Easy setup: Deploying your application in the cloud is an easy task. Cloud hosting service providers allow users to deploy apps through a web interface. If your code is error-free, then you don’t have to worry about its setup process. Most providers maintain a server output log file to make users aware of the errors or warnings produced by running the app. Thus, users can improve and optimize their code.

Technical Support: As you’re a customer, you’ll be offered top-class technical support. As far as I am concerned, there are four levels of support teams, and major organizations use ticketing/incident management systems to solve user queries. Your question or doubt will be raised as an issue. The issue will be escalated to the base level support team.

Every technology has its advantage and disadvantage, and cloud computing is no exception. Here are its disadvantages:

Disadvantages of cloud computing

Security: The year 2014 has been a year of hackers. Some major incidents are as follows:

Snapchat DB was hacked, and 10000’s of usernames and passwords were published online.

1000s of celebrity photos stored with Apple iCloud were leaked online

Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox network was down for several days.

Imagine your application is being used by 1000s of users per hour and all the servers that have cached the data are down by DDOS or DOS attack. What will you do in such situations?

Migrating data can be a headache: Moving large application from one provider to the other can be difficult. If your application has stored 100+ GB of data (images, records in DB table, videos, etc) to the cloud, then you’ll have to follow the below steps to move it to other cloud platforms:

Download entire data to your PC, laptop.

Upload data to the server of the other service provider.

If you’re in a country like the United States, Japan or Korea where internet speeds are up to 100/200 MBPS, then you don’t have to worry about the migration process. If you’re an owner of a startup located in a region where Internet speed is pathetic, then you may face difficult times in moving your online data.

These were the top advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing. Thanks for reading!